


Mirage

by Charlotte_Lancer



Series: Siren Song [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Ancient Devices, Angst, Author's Favorite, Canonical Character Death, Crying, Dark, Dating, Delusions, Emotional Hurt, Emotions, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Hopeful Ending, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Illusions, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Not Beta Read, Past Character Death, Science Fiction, Soulmates, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Whump, but only a really really tiny bit of comfort, but the soulmates thing is a tiny reference and not at all the focus of the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:07:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26941126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlotte_Lancer/pseuds/Charlotte_Lancer
Summary: In the end, they take the machine back to the city. It's locked in a lab, under guard at all times, but Sheppard can still feel it calling out to him, reaching into the back of his mind and begging him to use it again.(Sequel to 'Fantasy')
Relationships: Lyle Holland/John Sheppard, Rodney McKay & John Sheppard
Series: Siren Song [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965943
Kudos: 7





	Mirage

**Author's Note:**

> So I posted Fantasy, then immediately sat down and spent like eight hours writing this. Plot bunnies, man.
> 
> See the end notes for more detailed warnings.

In the end they take the machine back to the city. For further study, and because the treat of calorie-free desserts is too good of a morale-booster to pass up. They keep the machine in a locked lab, guarded by two of the Marines at all times. Weir declared the device strictly off limits except to researchers, and to the kitchen staff for pre-approved dessert creation.

Weir orders him to visit Heightmeyer, who tells him to stay away from the device, and advises Weir that he shouldn’t be allowed near it for any reason. The scientists and the chefs will have to find someone else to turn it on.

But Sheppard can still feel the device even without being near it, almost as if it’s calling out to him, reaching out to him and prodding him to use it, to conjure up things- _people_ \- that he knows he can’t have. He wonders absently if it’s a result of natural gene versus artificial, or maybe the strength of the gene expression. Rodney and Carson and everyone else in the city with the gene seem unaffected, and so far no one has mentioned any strange feelings from the device.

But the longer he ignores it, the stronger it gets, and each day it gets harder and harder to resist the temptation. Until one night, after a particularly bad mission where more of his people died, he finds he doesn’t want to bother resisting any more.

It’s late enough that he shouldn’t have to worry about anyone coming by his room as he tries it, focusses hard on the feeling of the device and looks at one of the photos that he made McKay take last time they used the device, stares straight into the eyes of the picture of Holland until he hears a noise behind him.

“Hey, Sheppard,” Holland says, a bright smile on his face. He looks around, confused. “Where are we?”

Sheppard concentrates again, thinks at the device that Holland should already know this, he can see the moment that Holland does, the confusion melting away and replaced with the idea that they were restationed to Atlantis after a bad crash.

“My room, Holland, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten it since last night,” Sheppard says, laughing.

Holland laughs too, “Of course not. I’ve just never seen your room so clean before.” And it’s true- in all the time they were stationed in Afghanistan, there was always _something_ out of place on Sheppard’s side of the room. But Sheppard cleaned up before trying this, hid all the mess under the bed, and everything he didn’t want to have to explain in a locked drawer.

“But let’s not focus on that,” Holland says, smirking and closing in on Sheppard, “when there’s so many better ways we could be spending our time.”

Sheppard lets Holland lead him to the bed, lets Holland push him down against the bed and kiss him exactly how Sheppard likes it, exactly how Sheppard remembers.

They spend the night together, in every sense of the world, and when Sheppard wakes up alone the next day it’s because he wants to, because they had Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to worry about and Holland had never risked staying until morning before and there was no reason to start taking that risk now. The fact that- well, anyway, there was no reason to change that now.

So Sheppard wakes up alone, and get ready for the day, and walks into the morning staff meeting like nothing’s out of the ordinary, like he didn’t just spend half the night having sex with his dead lover by way of an Ancient toy.

The device is actually a topic at the meeting- various people have proposals for what else it can be used for, and Weir approves some and denies others. The device is self-powered, but regardless of that anything that could cause a danger by disappearing suddenly due to a malfunction is out. No device-made bicycles and trampolines, or guns and ammo. But other things, things that could disappear without consequence in a worst-case scenario, are given a tentative green-light. Monopoly boards and chess sets, decorative items, a bigger clock for the mess hall.

Sheppard mostly refrains from talking during that discussion, except to suggest that new condiments for the mess hall might be something to consider. They’ve determined without a doubt that there’s no calories or nutrients to be gained from eating anything the machine produces, so food and medicine from it are functionally useless, but that doesn’t mean there’s no flavour.

Weir nods her assent to the idea, and Sheppard sits quietly again until they move on to the next subject. 

No one suspects him of anything.

……………………………………………….

A few months go by normally before anything big happens again. Sheppard spends each night with Holland, sometimes staying in his room as it is, and other times taking Holland on dates to conjured locations both remembered and imagined. 

The beach and the bowling alley go over well, it turns out Holland doesn’t really like his namesake country, and Sheppard can’t remember enough of Disneyland to make the trip really worth it, but they’re happy anyway, happy enough that Sheppard can pretend the scar on his arm isn’t there and that Holland is truly there with him again.

Teyla and Rodney both notice the change. They comment that he looks happier than before, seems more relaxed, at least when he’s in Atlantis. Neither says that they’re thinking, that he’s finally started to get over the pain of losing Holland, but he can tell anyway, and he does nothing to correct their assumptions.

They wouldn’t understand, either of them. They’d tell him it’s unhealthy, or unethical, come up with a thousand reasons to try to take Holland away from him again, but he won’t let them.

What he’s doing won’t hurt anyone- except maybe himself, in the end- and he won’t stop if he can at all help it. Holland means too much to him, and he still has so much to show him. He knows Holland is going to love flying a jumper, even if the jumper is only a creation of Sheppard’s mind.

…………………………………………

Another few weeks later, on what Sheppard is reasonably certain is the fifth anniversary of he and Holland’s first real date- converting the Pegasus calendar to an Earth year isn’t an exact science at the best of times, and all the days in Afghanistan tended to blend together when they weren’t going horribly wrong- he prompts the device to set a formal dinner in his room, complete with candles and flowers that Sheppard knows don’t grow in Atlantis or anywhere else in this galaxy.

He’s got a ring in his pocket, still in the pouch it came in when he bought it at an off-world market, ready to put on Holland’s finger later tonight. Sheppard already threaded the ring’s match onto the chain of his dog tags, confident that Holland would say yes.

They can’t make it official of course- they’re still in the military, and neither of them have any plans to retire any time soon. Plus, Holland still has the slight problem of being legally dead, even if Sheppard can see him plain as day sitting right across the table from him, alive and well and looking barely a day older than he did on Earth. Maybe they can make it official somewhere in Pegasus, though, if Holland wants.

Surely they can find plenty of planets that aren’t bound by the bureaucracy that’s so prevalent back home.

Sheppard waits until they’ve finished dessert to ask. He slides the ring bag out of his pocket, and gets out of his chair and walks over to Holland’s side of the table before sinking down onto one knee, pulling the ring out of the bag as he does.

He holds it up to Holland, and locks his eyes onto Holland’s as he asks,

“Lyle Holland, will you marry me?”

Lyle smiles, pulls him up off the floor and into a deep kiss that leaves them both breathless, before saying,

“Of course I’ll marry you, John.” John slides the ring onto Lyle’s finger, and pulls him into another passionate kiss.

They lose track of time after that, too busy celebrating their engagement to pay attention to something as mundane as time, but Sheppard’s so high on happiness and love that he couldn’t care less. If he’s half asleep during tomorrow's morning meeting, then the rest of the senior staff will just have to deal with it.

  
  


Sheppard wakes up the next morning to Holland asleep in his arms, and Rodney yelling at him over the radio.

He blinks, and shifts his arm enough to see the face of his watch.

He’s slept through his alarm, and he’s 10 minutes late for the staff meeting, so he grabs the radio from his bedside table, and keys the talk button to respond to Rodney.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he says, “we overslept.”

“We? Who’s We? Sheppard! What-” Sheppard shuts off the radio before Rodney can yell any longer, and sets it back down onto the table.

Holland is awake now- no surprise, Rodney’s yelling could wake the dead- and he looks up groggily at Sheppard.

“Something wrong?” he asks, eyes half-lidded.

“No, I’m just late for a meeting. I’ll be back soon, go back to sleep.” 

“Alright,” He says, already drifting back to sleep.

Sheppard leans down to press a quick kiss to Holland’s lips, and tugs the blanket back up to cover Holland’s shoulders before heading into the bathroom to take the fastest shower of his life.

  
  


He ends up almost half an hour late to the meeting in the end, and Rodney gives him strange looks throughout. Rodney doesn’t say anything during the meeting, though, and Sheppard is hoping that Rodney will chalk up his earlier slip to exhaustion, or to a one-night stand that Sheppard will cite Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on and neither confirm nor deny.

But Rodney doesn’t let it go, and after the meeting he corners Sheppard and herds him into an unused lab, shutting the door behind them and backing him into the wall in a way that would probably be more threatening coming from, say, a marine, and not a physicist who still complains when they have to walk more than an hour at a time.

“So, had a good night, Sheppard?” McKay asks, faux-casual, and Sheppard can see that he suspects.

“Real good,” he says, trying to figure out how McKay could have figured it out, whether he’s just guessing or if he’s found some proof that Sheppard didn’t know existed.

“You didn’t tell us you were seeing anyone,” McKay states, “Something new? Or too casual to mention?” McKay’s not getting any closer to him, but he’s not backing off, either, and Sheppard’s starting to feel trapped despite knowing he could get away from McKay easily if it really came down to it.

But he knows that would just make things more suspicious, and he doesn’t want to hurt Rodney even if it wouldn’t, so he presses himself harder against the wall, and says,

“You do know the American military has rules about talking about this sort of thing, right? I legally can’t tell you who I was with last night, Rodney. It wasn’t one of the scientists.” Rodney will know it wasn’t Weir or Heightmeyer or Teyla either, since they were all at the meeting before Sheppard showed up, and none of the Marines on Atlantis right now are female.

Sheppard wants Rodney to understand that it was a man he had in his room last night, wants Rodney to assume it’s a Marine he’s sleeping with and back off, or even to yell at him for sleeping with someone under his command, as long as it gets Rodney further from the truth, further from the knowledge that it was Holland in Sheppard’s room last night and every night that they’re not on another planet.

But Rodney doesn’t make the assumption, and he doesn’t back off. Instead Rodney drops the casual act like a costume he’s done with, and leans in further, so close that anyone walking by might assume Sheppard’s sleeping with _Rodney_ , and he says,

“Don’t bullshit me, Sheppard. I’ve seen the power usage logs on the VR device, and I know you’re still using it. I don’t know how you’re getting it to work remotely, but you are, and you need to stop.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, McKay.” He holds up his hands in weak protest, and Rodney glares harder.

“You need to stop this, Sheppard. It’s not healthy for you. You’re sleeping with your own hallucination, which is so far past sane that there’s not even a word for it, and you’re so deluded that you don’t even see how fucked up this whole situation is.”

Sheppard moves his hand to grasp his dog tags, ring and all, through his shirt. “Back off, Rodney. You don’t know half of what you think you do.” He glares down at Rodney, anger fueled by fear, and clutches the ring tighter.

Rodney’s face softens marginally, just enough to betray a flicker of pity Sheppard doesn’t want. “I get it, Sheppard, I do. I know you loved him, I know he was your soulmate. But this isn’t healthy, this isn’t how you _deal with it_. You’re going to end up hurting yourself more in the long run.”

“Rodney-”

“No,” Rodney says, “You need to hear this, because if you don’t take care of this yourself I _will_ , and I think we both know you don’t want that.” Rodney takes a deep breath, and relaxes his expression into something approaching neutral. “The device is a toy, Sheppard. An Ancient toy, yes, but still a toy, and some day it’s going to stop working. Maybe not soon, maybe not even for years to come, but it will. And the longer you let this go on, the worse it’s going to be when it’s over.”

Sheppard listens to Rodney’s words with ill-ease, and all of the fight has gone out of him by the time Rodney’s done. Sheppard sinks down onto the floor with cold dread settled firm in his stomach, and Rodney follows him down. The cold floor and their positions remind him of the room where they found the device in the first place, and Sheppard can’t help but laugh. A quick, breathless laugh that sounds almost like a sob, and for a moment Sheppard’s not sure it isn’t.

It takes him longer than he’d like to be sure he can speak without his voice breaking. “Who else knows?” he asks, once he can. He’s not quite meeting Rodney’s eyes, half shame and half fear, and he hugs his knees up to his chest, forcing himself into the smallest shape possible.

“Just me,” Rodney says, too much sympathy in his voice. It makes Sheppard feel worse, makes him want to crawl back into his bed and turn off his radio and hide from the world for as long as Atlantis herself will let him. “I wouldn’t do that to you unless there was no other choice.”

Sheppard lets his head fall into his knees, doesn’t try to hold back the tears this time. He’s half-aware of Rodney standing up and doing something- Sheppard’s not sure exactly what- before sitting back down next to him.

Rodney hovers a hand over Sheppard’s shoulder for just a second before pulling it back without touching him. Probably for the best- Sheppard’s not sure himself how he’d take being touched right now, and erring on the side of caution seems like the right move right now. Instead, Rodney sits quietly beside him, and waits for Sheppard to finish crying.

By the time Sheppard runs out of tears to cry, Rodney’s started to fidget awkwardly, but he’s still waiting, with far more patience than Sheppard would have thought him capable of before today.

Sheppard wipes at his eyes with the backs of his hands, and looks up at the door. The window is set to opaque now, and he guesses that that’s what Rodney was doing when he stood earlier. He’s too exhausted, mentally and physically, to care if anyone saw him before Rodney made the switch.

“I asked him to marry me last night.” He’s staring straight ahead at the clouded glass. He can’t bring himself to look at Rodney, to see what might be showing on the other man’s face. “He said yes.” Because John had expected him to say yes, he knows. Despite what Rodney might think, he hasn’t totally lost sight of reality. Even if he’s been choosing to ignore reality more often than not, lately.

“John…” Rodney says, voice ragged with something that Sheppard doesn’t want to think about.

After a long pause, Rodney speaks again.

“I think you need help, John.”

“I know,” he says, and he really does. Rodney’s right- even if the device could somehow work forever, Rodney’s still right.

The Holland in his room is a memory, a ghost frozen in time from a day that’s years ago now, given fake memories and knowledge from Sheppard’s mind. This Holland doesn’t even remember his own sister’s name, because Sheppard never knew it.

Holland always just called her “kiddo”, and Sheppard always figured he’d find out her name when he met her in person.

He couldn’t bring himself to ask her at the funeral.

Eventually he lets Rodney pull him to his feet, and lets Rodney lead him down the hall to the room where he knows the device is being stored. The Marines are gone when they get there, and Sheppard doesn’t know how Rodney’s done it, but he’s sure he has.

“I’m going to take away your access to it,” Rodney says, voice tired. “No one else will be affected, so nobody has to know except us.”

“Alright,” he says, nodding his head absently. He misses Holland. The real Holland, the one he can’t have no matter how many Ancient reality toys they find. His left hand goes to the scar on his right wrist without his permission, before he can stop it, and he runs the thumb over the raised scar under his black wristband.

A reminder that the real Holland is dead, no matter how much Sheppard wishes he could change the facts.

Rodney’s looking at him, assessing him. Seeing if he’s really as ready as he says he is, he guesses.

He is. He just wants this to be over now, wants to go back to his room and unclean the mess and pretend last night never happened, that the last almost half of a year never happened and that he hadn’t spent too many nights to admit to making love to a memory.

“Do it,” he says, so drained that he’s not sure how he’s still upright.

Rodney nods, and kneels down next to the controls on the machine. Sheppard’s not sure how Rodney can lock out a single user, but apparently he can, and Sheppard feels the exact moment it happens, the connection in the back of his mind dissolving away in the blink of an eye.

“It’s done,” Rodney says, as if Sheppard didn’t already know, and he stands back up and walks over to Sheppard. This time he lays the hand on Sheppard’s shoulder without hesitation, and they stand in silence for a long moment, each thinking about what they’d just done.

“Are you alright, Sheppard,” Rodney finally asks, when Sheppard still hasn’t moved from his spot after another minute.

He takes a calming breath before speaking, thinks of Teyla and Ford and Rodney and Weir and everyone else he cares about here, all the people who care about him. “No,” he says, “no. But I think I will be.”

Rodney walks Sheppard back to his room without either of them really meaning for it to happen, but Sheppard’s glad it does, because when they get there Sheppard hesitates before opening the door, doesn’t want to face the emptiness alone.

“Don’t leave yet,” he says, “please.” And he opens the door the manual way, mind too raw from losing the connection to the device to even think of controlling any other Ancient technology mentally for a while.

The bed is still mussed from this morning, sheets wrinkled and blankets folded back at odd angles, and in the middle of the pile is a piece of metal, glinting in the sunlight that’s streaming through a window Sheppard hadn’t opened.

Sheppard picks up the ring, and tucks it behind the frame that holds his favourite photo of him and the illusion of Holland. He’d replace it with a photo of the real Holland in a heartbeat if he could get one, but he knows that’s wishful thinking he can’t afford right now.

He looks back up at Rodney, and he doesn’t have any words left to say, but Rodney seems to understand anyway, and he waits for Sheppard to turn towards the bathroom door before he leaves, sliding the door shut behind him.

Sheppard showers again, letting the water rinse the salt from his face, and then he climbs into a bed that he’d swear still smells like Holland, even though he knows it can’t.

Tomorrow he’ll change the sheets, and make an appointment with Heightmeyer, and start something he should have started a long time ago. He’ll tell her everything that happened with the real Holland, and some of what’s happened with the fake one. Enough for her to help him, but not enough for her to run screaming to Weir with a psych discharge in hand- not that they could send him back to Earth if they wanted to, but it still pays to be cautious. Rodney knows the whole truth, and that’ll have to be enough. He knows Rodney wouldn’t send him away.

But that’s all a problem for tomorrow, anyway. Today, he shuts off his radio, trusting Rodney to make the appropriate excuses for him, pulls the pillow that used to belong to his fake Holland close to his chest, and settles into a dreamless sleep. 

There’s a long road ahead, but for the first time, he's pretty sure he can walk it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> [Warnings:  
> -Basically, Sheppard purposefully and knowingly carries on a romantic and sexual relationship with a machine generated hallucination, and starts to forget that the hallucination isn't real. Rodney eventually snaps him out of this, but not before Sheppard falls in deep enough to propose marriage to the hallucination.  
> -Frankly Sheppard is in a pretty bad mental state for most of this, and though there is a hopeful ending, the story cuts off before any of the actual healing happens.  
> -Also, Sheppard worries a few time about Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but that policy's really the least of his problems in this fic.
> 
> As always, please tell me if you think this needs any warnings it doesn't already have.]


End file.
